Here are a few facts all travelers should know before visiting Uruguay:

- 1. It is a very expensive country, one example: a cup of expresso costs 2.50 Euros, in Paris (not the most thrifty city in the world) it costs 1.10 Euros.

- 2. It is not a vrey hip or cool destination all the travel magazines and TV shows would have us believe, nor is it a very sophisticated country -- even places like Punta del Este and José Ignacio look bland compared to seaside resorts like Hoi An (Vietnam) or really hip villages like Ubud (Bali).

- 3. Speaking of Punta del Este , la Barra and José Ignacio: those places only come alive from December to March, outside these periods, they are sleepy towns with barely any café, shop and restaurant open.

- 4. Since 2008, insecurity and crime rate are steadily rising, 2015 and 2016 each counted 300 murders a year.

- 5. For gourmet travelers like us and foodies, it is a mediocre destination as there is only a handful of good restaurants. Also, unfortunately, Uruguayans seem to have the same bad habit as their North American Neighbors: they eat greasy food in enormous serving sizes and drink mostly soft drinks (sodas), which really is a pity as they do have some pretty good wines.

-6 . If you want incredible vistas, beautiful landscapes, wonderful historical sites with a cultural heritage in South America you had better go to Argentina, Chile or Peru.

We’re really happy and satisfied to see that Chef Rasmus Kofoed has obtained his three stars in the 2016 Michelin Guide for his restaurant, Geranium in Copenhagen (Denmark).

We congratulate him and his team for offering us a wonderful culinary experience that was really worth the trip. The lunch we hadthere on May 15th 2015 was our best mealof 2015. Not only was the cooking masterful, the service was exemplary in its kindness and professionalism.We felt right at home!

Salinda Premium Resort in Phuc Quoc’s island, Vietnam is what a five-star resort should look and feel like.

At Salinda Premium, they got (almost) everything right: the design, the architecture, the location, the welcome routine, the service, the staff, the food & beverage, and the management. It is premium indeed.

However, there’s one area in which they failed big time: the kid’s club.

We stayed at the Salinda Premium Resort from December 31st, 2015 to January 3rd, 2016; everything was perfect until we left our five-year old child at the kid’s club for half an hour on the morning of January 1st, 2016. When we came back to pick him up, he was nowhere to be found. The staff from the kid’s club told us very matter-of-factly that he had already left… with a tall Frenchman! We went immediately into panic mode and started running around the resort like headless chickens looking for our child, until a couple told us they had just seen him take the elevator by himself. At that moment, we figured out he must have gone to our room and that is indeed where we found him a few minutes later. Our room was opened to him by the maid working on the floor after she found him wandering around and asked him his room number – which he was able to give her. The longest five minutes of our life… This absolutely inacceptable incident was taken very lightly by the young Vietnamese staff who seemed to have no clue about the safety and security of the children they look after.

Of course we talked to the general manager, Jeevan, and his assistant manager and told them that there was an urgent need to review the whole Kid's club process. The Kid’s club personnel must be extremely rigorous with the children left into their care.

Salinda Premium Resort claims that they’re Asia’s biggest and safest playground for adult and children. It may be true but for us they still fall short in one area -- and the most important one.